Ok, now for the continuation of Day 2. I drove back up to the campus for dinner in the restaurant Caterina De Medici, which is the Italian Fine Dining restaurant at the CIA. It is a beautiful restaurant, and looks very Tuscan-inspired, with soft yellow paint on the walls (like creamy butter) and black wrought iron. They had a large table for all of us Boot Campers set up and ready.
We were served an amuse bouche (this is a single bite-sized hors d'oevre) and 3 different platters of italian meats like prosciutto, ham, salami, etc, for starters. I really liked the salami the best. They also served us bread, but I didn't eat very much of the bread, to save room for the main course.
We all chose our main course, and I chose Quail with polenta. I have never have quail before, so I thought this would be a good time to try something totally different. The quails are really small, and I was served 2. They were butterflied and secured with skewers, and grilled. The polenta was creamy and rich, and plain tasting, which is actually what I was hoping for.
The servers and the cooks in the back were all students at this restuarant, and they did a good job. The other boot campers were asking lots of questions of the waiter, and what he lacked in knowledge he made up for in earnestness! He did his best, I give him that. I forget that the servers are just students in their 20's with very little life experience to be able to answer the questions, but it is all a learning experience. The restaurant ran like a real restaurant, it didn't feel like a school at all.
Lastly, we had dessert and I got Zuppa Emiliana, which was a layer cake with chocolate and vanilla cream. The cake was soaked in some kind of lemon liqueur. I didn't care for the liqueur in the cake, so I ate the creams. (On a side note, lots of the desserts I have eaten here that have cake in them are soaked in a liqueur, and I am learning I don't care for that alcohol taste. I know lots of people do like that, but for me it is too much. I'd prefer a sugar syrup I think. It is good to know that I am finding this out about my tastes.)
Our dinner started at 6 pm, and I finished up at 8:30 pm, and I excused myself to come back to the hotel. I think I was the first one to leave, but I was ready to go. It was a long day, but good of course. I guess I will find out how late everyone stayed there when we start up at class tomorrow.
Anyway, it was a good day. Stay tuned for more entries.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Day 2, part 1
Last night I was SO TIRED, and I had the worst headache ever, and my nose was getting stuffy. I don't know what it was, allergies, or just the effects of a hectic day without a full night's sleep. I went to bed at 9:30 pm, which for me is unheard of. I woke up at 1:30 am, but luckily I was able to get back to sleep, and I was up again at 5:30 am.
I got dressed in my chef outfit, and drove up to the school. No frost on the car this morning, thank goodness, the temperature was above freezing. Weatherwise, the area got a lot of rain today, so the temps were higher, which also might explain my allergy situation last night as the front moved in.
I went to Roth Hall, K16 for breakfast. I was hungry, but I decided to go kind of light, so I just had some rice chex cereal and banana with milk. Nothing fancy. I know I should've taken advantage of the hot breakfast, but I just needed something light. Maybe tomorrow morning.
We all met in our lecture room, and we had a new chef instructor today, Chef John DeShetler. We spent the morning in the lecture getting briefed on the methods of dry-heat cooking with fats and oils, thickening agents, and classic and comtemporary sauces. The first technique we talked about was Saute. We also talked about Stir Fry, Pan Fry, and Deep Fry. We talked about this because all the food we were making today used the variety of dry-heat cooking methods.
We talked about thickeners for sauces, such as reducing the sauce, using a beurre manie, roux, starches, and a few other ways. We also talked about how there are a lot of classic sauces in French cooking that literally take days to make, compared to more modern sauces that are no where near that lengthy in time to make, although I think they still involve a high level of skill to do them well. One thing I learned with contemporary sauces is that relishes, chutneys, salsas, flavored butters are considered sauces. Very cool. I did not know that.
For the rest of the morning, we were divided into teams, and we had an assignment of the food we were to make. We started around 9:30 am, and we were to finish at 12:30 pm. I am on Team Two. Our menu was the following:
For the pork, they gave us a full piece of pork loin with the bones and fat still attached, so we had to break that down. The chef helped to show me how to slice the meat into cutlets which I did, and then another team member pounded them out. We also had a lot of chopping to do for all the components of all the dishes. I assisted with preparing the spinach, which was dirty, sandy, and felt like it had just come up out of the ground. We had to wash it 3 times to get all the grit off.
When we first got to the kitchen, we put the potatoes in the oven to bake for the gnocchi. We peeled them and put them through a food mill to get them mashed. We added butter, an egg, egg yolk, and then flour to create a "dough". We rolled out the dough piece by piece to form a snake, and then cut the snake into about an inch and a half pieces. Then the chef showed us how to make indentations on them with a fork -- this helps to hold the sauce. We boiled them and then put on melted butter and parsley. I had never made gnocchi before, and they were really easy to make, and they tasted good, like a light and airy potato. We should have put more salt in them, though. They needed some seasoning. Also, we did over-cook them, but they still tasted good, they just were kind of falling apart.
We pan fried the cutlets, and I got to do the mushroom ragout, which turned out good -- although I should have added more salt too. I think we under-seasoned all our food, I should have tasted it as it went along, just like they say. But it was so hectic that you forget to do these things.
The thing that got finished last as the spinach. With all our dishes done, we created our presentation plates for the meal and the salad on separate plates. Then we put everything else on large platters for the lunch service.
The other teams were making completely different menus at the same time as my team, so when all this was done, the table with all the food looked really great! All the teams did a really good job on their food. We finished exactly on time, amazingly, and then we made up our plates and ate the food. I tried to take a little bit of everything so that I could try all the dishes. I think my favorite thing was the gnocchi, but again, it needed salt! I also really liked the frisee salad, the combination of the frisee, with the vinaigrette, and the almonds, apples, grapes, and goat cheese was fantastic. So, althought there were minor flaws in all the food we produced, it was all very edible and as good as anything I have eaten on other buffet lines, such as at conferences I have attended, or hotel buffets.
After lunch, we got our group picture taken in the kitchen. (I hope that it looks good!) We had an afternoon lecture on food presentation guidelines, basically, how to plate your food, either on a plate or on a platter. Obviously there is a science and an art to this kind of thing, but I liked going over the science part of it. Some of the concepts were balance, unity, focal point, and flow. You try to create a focal point on the plate, such as the meat on top, with the side dishes somewhat under the meat. This also creates the untiy and shows how the food goes together. Using a variety of colors and textures is also an important thing to do here.
Another thing I learned with plating, is to use the edge of the plate like a frame. Don't put food on the edges of the plate. Make sure you keep your frame.
We talked about garnishes next. The biggest thing here that I learned was: avoid non-functional garnishes. All the garnishes on the plate should be edible and be in harmony with the item. If something is non-functional, like a rosemary stem or a tomato rosette, what is the point? You spend all your time creating a rosette, and it just gets thrown away. You can't eat a rosemary stem -- so why is it there? Better to spend your time on a garnish that can be eaten and enjoyed. Also, I think it is confusing to a person eating the plate if they don't know what to do with the garnish. All this made a lot of sense to me.
After the afternoon session, we were done around 3:30 pm. Luckily I did not have the headache of yesterday, so this was a big improvement. I needed to go back to the hotel and get some alone-time and recharge. We have a dinner tonight together at the restaurant on the campus, Caterina de Medici. Also, it felt good to get a shower and feel refreshed.
So that's all for now. I will let you know how dinner was in another posting. Later!
I got dressed in my chef outfit, and drove up to the school. No frost on the car this morning, thank goodness, the temperature was above freezing. Weatherwise, the area got a lot of rain today, so the temps were higher, which also might explain my allergy situation last night as the front moved in.
I went to Roth Hall, K16 for breakfast. I was hungry, but I decided to go kind of light, so I just had some rice chex cereal and banana with milk. Nothing fancy. I know I should've taken advantage of the hot breakfast, but I just needed something light. Maybe tomorrow morning.
We all met in our lecture room, and we had a new chef instructor today, Chef John DeShetler. We spent the morning in the lecture getting briefed on the methods of dry-heat cooking with fats and oils, thickening agents, and classic and comtemporary sauces. The first technique we talked about was Saute. We also talked about Stir Fry, Pan Fry, and Deep Fry. We talked about this because all the food we were making today used the variety of dry-heat cooking methods.
We talked about thickeners for sauces, such as reducing the sauce, using a beurre manie, roux, starches, and a few other ways. We also talked about how there are a lot of classic sauces in French cooking that literally take days to make, compared to more modern sauces that are no where near that lengthy in time to make, although I think they still involve a high level of skill to do them well. One thing I learned with contemporary sauces is that relishes, chutneys, salsas, flavored butters are considered sauces. Very cool. I did not know that.
For the rest of the morning, we were divided into teams, and we had an assignment of the food we were to make. We started around 9:30 am, and we were to finish at 12:30 pm. I am on Team Two. Our menu was the following:
- Frisee with Almonds, Apples, Grapes, and Goat Cheese
- Sauteed Berkshire Pork Cutlets with Wild Mushroom Ragout
- Potato Gnocchi
- Sauteed Spinach
For the pork, they gave us a full piece of pork loin with the bones and fat still attached, so we had to break that down. The chef helped to show me how to slice the meat into cutlets which I did, and then another team member pounded them out. We also had a lot of chopping to do for all the components of all the dishes. I assisted with preparing the spinach, which was dirty, sandy, and felt like it had just come up out of the ground. We had to wash it 3 times to get all the grit off.
When we first got to the kitchen, we put the potatoes in the oven to bake for the gnocchi. We peeled them and put them through a food mill to get them mashed. We added butter, an egg, egg yolk, and then flour to create a "dough". We rolled out the dough piece by piece to form a snake, and then cut the snake into about an inch and a half pieces. Then the chef showed us how to make indentations on them with a fork -- this helps to hold the sauce. We boiled them and then put on melted butter and parsley. I had never made gnocchi before, and they were really easy to make, and they tasted good, like a light and airy potato. We should have put more salt in them, though. They needed some seasoning. Also, we did over-cook them, but they still tasted good, they just were kind of falling apart.
We pan fried the cutlets, and I got to do the mushroom ragout, which turned out good -- although I should have added more salt too. I think we under-seasoned all our food, I should have tasted it as it went along, just like they say. But it was so hectic that you forget to do these things.
The thing that got finished last as the spinach. With all our dishes done, we created our presentation plates for the meal and the salad on separate plates. Then we put everything else on large platters for the lunch service.
The other teams were making completely different menus at the same time as my team, so when all this was done, the table with all the food looked really great! All the teams did a really good job on their food. We finished exactly on time, amazingly, and then we made up our plates and ate the food. I tried to take a little bit of everything so that I could try all the dishes. I think my favorite thing was the gnocchi, but again, it needed salt! I also really liked the frisee salad, the combination of the frisee, with the vinaigrette, and the almonds, apples, grapes, and goat cheese was fantastic. So, althought there were minor flaws in all the food we produced, it was all very edible and as good as anything I have eaten on other buffet lines, such as at conferences I have attended, or hotel buffets.
After lunch, we got our group picture taken in the kitchen. (I hope that it looks good!) We had an afternoon lecture on food presentation guidelines, basically, how to plate your food, either on a plate or on a platter. Obviously there is a science and an art to this kind of thing, but I liked going over the science part of it. Some of the concepts were balance, unity, focal point, and flow. You try to create a focal point on the plate, such as the meat on top, with the side dishes somewhat under the meat. This also creates the untiy and shows how the food goes together. Using a variety of colors and textures is also an important thing to do here.
Another thing I learned with plating, is to use the edge of the plate like a frame. Don't put food on the edges of the plate. Make sure you keep your frame.
We talked about garnishes next. The biggest thing here that I learned was: avoid non-functional garnishes. All the garnishes on the plate should be edible and be in harmony with the item. If something is non-functional, like a rosemary stem or a tomato rosette, what is the point? You spend all your time creating a rosette, and it just gets thrown away. You can't eat a rosemary stem -- so why is it there? Better to spend your time on a garnish that can be eaten and enjoyed. Also, I think it is confusing to a person eating the plate if they don't know what to do with the garnish. All this made a lot of sense to me.
After the afternoon session, we were done around 3:30 pm. Luckily I did not have the headache of yesterday, so this was a big improvement. I needed to go back to the hotel and get some alone-time and recharge. We have a dinner tonight together at the restaurant on the campus, Caterina de Medici. Also, it felt good to get a shower and feel refreshed.
So that's all for now. I will let you know how dinner was in another posting. Later!
Monday, November 29, 2010
Day 1
I went to sleep very early last night, and woke up on my own around 2:30 am. I needed to wake up at 5 am, and I never really got back into a sound sleep between those hours. This will come into play later, so I just wanted to mention it.
When 5 am finally arrived, I was up, got a shower, got dressed and went down to my rental car, which was covered in frost. The car didn't have an ice scraper in it, so I had to improvise with a credit card. Luckily I had my gloves so my hands didn't freeze. The frost did not come off easily at all, but I scraped it as best as I could.
I drove up to the campus, and parked in the parking garage that we were told to park in. It was dark, quiet, and cold as I walked to the Continuing Education building, which also houses the Pastry and Baking classes. There were some students walking around outside, so apparently they start really early at the CIA.
I went to the East Dining Room in the building, and was one of the first Boot Campers there. Eventually the others came in, and we got a really nice duffel bag which had our uniforms in it, as well as some other goodies like a pencil, pen, and a travel mug. I was nervous about the uniform when I saw it -- how would I look? How would it fit? I was worried.
We were shown our lecture room, and dropped off our stuff, and then we were taken to breakfast. All the food at the CIA is made by students, and they have a breakfast service from 6 am - 9 am in their main building. The dining room where you eat was once the chapel in this building before the CIA was here. Before the CIA, the campus was a Jesuit Seminary. The main dining room had a high ceiling, with beautiful paintings, stained glass, and rich woodwork. It was like a smaller version of the dining hall at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books.
Across from the dining room was Kitchen 16 (or K16). They have a dry erase board with what is being offered that morning. You place your order, then wait for it while the students prepare it. And let me tell you, the offereings were very impressive: Eggs Benedict, Pancakes, Chorizo Sausage Breakfast burrito, egg white omelet, western omelet... the selections were great. You could also get several side dishes like home fries, bacon, yogurt, fruit... So many selections. I decided to get pancakes, and they were HUGE, and they gave me three of them! The pancakes were the size of a dinner plate, and probably 3/4 inch thick! I barely ate half of them.
After eating, you must bus your own table, and you take the dishes to the dish-washing center. This is a standard operationg procedure that we had to do throughout the day.
At 7 am we started the lecture part of the day, and we met our Chef Instructor, Dave Bruno. Everyone introduced themselves, and shared why they were here. I would say most of us are here for the same reasons: We love to cook, and we've wanted to do this for a long time. For me, I wanted to get some formal education/training, and see if it is something I could do. There are 15 boot campers in this program, 2/3 are men, 1/3 are women.
The Chef gave a lecture about Mise En Place, Basic Culinary Preparations, Knife Skills, and Stocks. The lecture was interactive and luckily I knew a lot of the answers to the questions he was asking us. After we finished up the lecture, we had some time to put on our uniforms which consisted of checkered pants, a chef's coat, a toque (chef's hat), and an apron. My uniform fit me fine, and I was so relieved! I don't think I looked too nerdy in it, either! :-)
We made our way to our kitchen, and we picked out a station. We got a tour of the kitchen to learn where everything was. The Chef did a demonstration of what we were going to be doing for the morning, which was knife skills. First we worked on fruit. We had to supreme an orange and a grapefruit, wedge a kiwi fruit, and slice up an apple. This wasn't too difficult, but the thing with this, though, was working on neatness and precision. After we were done, the fruit was made into a fruit salad that we ate for lunch.
After the fruit, we moved on to vegetables. We had to slice onions (1/8 inch pole to pole), dice onions, dice carrots, batonnet carrots, oblique-cut carrots, dice celery, batonnet potatoes, mince garlic, chop parsley. That was a lot of knife skill work, and it took up most of the morning. While we were doing this work, there were other students in the kitchen who made our lunch. They used our oblique-cut carrots for the lunch, and they made french fries out of the batonnet potatoes.
We cleaned up our stations, and then it was time for lunch. I was glad too because I was starting to get a headache -- from the sleep last night, and also just from the "first day jitters". You know how when you start a new job, the first day is always the hardest and makes you get a headache? Well, I was getting one of those. They put the food on platters for a buffet, and we all went through for some lunch. We had a mesclun salad with balsamic vinagrette, roast chicken, glazed carrots, french fries, and mashed potatoes. I took a little bit of everything.
We ate in our lecture room, and they also set up some desserts from the pastry students. Oh, that reminds me, when we were doing our knife skills, the bakery students had made Stollen, which is a sweet roll type of pastry. They passed around some Stollen for all of us to try. It was very good, of course! Anyway, back to the lunch. It was a huge lunch, and I sampled a dessert which was like a variation of Tiramisu. It was very light and airy and delicious of course.
In the afternoon, we took a behind the scenes tour of the store room areas, where they have all the dry goods, produce, and other ingredients used in the cooking throughout the school. It was fun to see all the variety of things that they had, and all the unusual foods too. It is quite an operation here, and everything seemed to be running like clockwork.
We next went on a thorough tour of the school with the Director of the Food Enthusiast Programs. She was a great tour guide, and was an alum of the CIA herself. We toured the Baking and Pastry school, the main building which is called Roth Hall, and we were able to see the rooms where they "fabricate" (butcher) the fish and meat for the entire school. A student gave us a fantastic tour of the meat locker where all the meat is. He was a great speaker, and you could tell that he was "in his element". He has a lot of passion for meat and butchering! He said that beef tenderloin, which is the most expensive cut of meat, is also CRAP! He said there are much better cuts of meat for your money, and don't buy into the myth that it is the best cut of beef.
After the tour, the day started to really hit me, and I was TIRED, and had a pounding headache, but the day was over around 4 pm. Now I would call this a FULL DAY. They do not call it a Boot Camp for nothing, I will tell you that.
We were dismissed, and dinner was on our own. I wasn't hungry for something really big, so I went to a cafe on the campus called the Apple Pie Bakery and Cafe. I got a turkey sandwich (on brioche) with a chipotle mayonnaise, and I couldn't resist getting 2 cookies: chocolate chip and a huge cookie called a "Not an Oreo Oreo". I also perused their bookstore, which was filled with cookbooks, cooking supplies, utensils -- it was AWESOME! I looked at their t-shirts and sweatshirts, but did not not purchase anything... yet. I still have a few days to mull it over if I will get anything. All the shirts were very expensive, not unlike any college bookstore. So I have to think about this purchase decision. I could easily have bought everything in that store though.
I drove back to the hotel, and immediately took a long hot shower to soothe my headache, and wash off the smell of onions that I could sense. I guess smelling like a kitchen is part of the bargain when you do something like this. I ate the sandwich and the cookies, which were outstanding, of course.
The rest of this evening is going to be spent decompressing and re-energizing for tomorrow. Before I end this for now, here is a list of some of the new things I learned today:
When 5 am finally arrived, I was up, got a shower, got dressed and went down to my rental car, which was covered in frost. The car didn't have an ice scraper in it, so I had to improvise with a credit card. Luckily I had my gloves so my hands didn't freeze. The frost did not come off easily at all, but I scraped it as best as I could.
I drove up to the campus, and parked in the parking garage that we were told to park in. It was dark, quiet, and cold as I walked to the Continuing Education building, which also houses the Pastry and Baking classes. There were some students walking around outside, so apparently they start really early at the CIA.
I went to the East Dining Room in the building, and was one of the first Boot Campers there. Eventually the others came in, and we got a really nice duffel bag which had our uniforms in it, as well as some other goodies like a pencil, pen, and a travel mug. I was nervous about the uniform when I saw it -- how would I look? How would it fit? I was worried.
We were shown our lecture room, and dropped off our stuff, and then we were taken to breakfast. All the food at the CIA is made by students, and they have a breakfast service from 6 am - 9 am in their main building. The dining room where you eat was once the chapel in this building before the CIA was here. Before the CIA, the campus was a Jesuit Seminary. The main dining room had a high ceiling, with beautiful paintings, stained glass, and rich woodwork. It was like a smaller version of the dining hall at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books.
Across from the dining room was Kitchen 16 (or K16). They have a dry erase board with what is being offered that morning. You place your order, then wait for it while the students prepare it. And let me tell you, the offereings were very impressive: Eggs Benedict, Pancakes, Chorizo Sausage Breakfast burrito, egg white omelet, western omelet... the selections were great. You could also get several side dishes like home fries, bacon, yogurt, fruit... So many selections. I decided to get pancakes, and they were HUGE, and they gave me three of them! The pancakes were the size of a dinner plate, and probably 3/4 inch thick! I barely ate half of them.
After eating, you must bus your own table, and you take the dishes to the dish-washing center. This is a standard operationg procedure that we had to do throughout the day.
At 7 am we started the lecture part of the day, and we met our Chef Instructor, Dave Bruno. Everyone introduced themselves, and shared why they were here. I would say most of us are here for the same reasons: We love to cook, and we've wanted to do this for a long time. For me, I wanted to get some formal education/training, and see if it is something I could do. There are 15 boot campers in this program, 2/3 are men, 1/3 are women.
The Chef gave a lecture about Mise En Place, Basic Culinary Preparations, Knife Skills, and Stocks. The lecture was interactive and luckily I knew a lot of the answers to the questions he was asking us. After we finished up the lecture, we had some time to put on our uniforms which consisted of checkered pants, a chef's coat, a toque (chef's hat), and an apron. My uniform fit me fine, and I was so relieved! I don't think I looked too nerdy in it, either! :-)
We made our way to our kitchen, and we picked out a station. We got a tour of the kitchen to learn where everything was. The Chef did a demonstration of what we were going to be doing for the morning, which was knife skills. First we worked on fruit. We had to supreme an orange and a grapefruit, wedge a kiwi fruit, and slice up an apple. This wasn't too difficult, but the thing with this, though, was working on neatness and precision. After we were done, the fruit was made into a fruit salad that we ate for lunch.
After the fruit, we moved on to vegetables. We had to slice onions (1/8 inch pole to pole), dice onions, dice carrots, batonnet carrots, oblique-cut carrots, dice celery, batonnet potatoes, mince garlic, chop parsley. That was a lot of knife skill work, and it took up most of the morning. While we were doing this work, there were other students in the kitchen who made our lunch. They used our oblique-cut carrots for the lunch, and they made french fries out of the batonnet potatoes.
We cleaned up our stations, and then it was time for lunch. I was glad too because I was starting to get a headache -- from the sleep last night, and also just from the "first day jitters". You know how when you start a new job, the first day is always the hardest and makes you get a headache? Well, I was getting one of those. They put the food on platters for a buffet, and we all went through for some lunch. We had a mesclun salad with balsamic vinagrette, roast chicken, glazed carrots, french fries, and mashed potatoes. I took a little bit of everything.
We ate in our lecture room, and they also set up some desserts from the pastry students. Oh, that reminds me, when we were doing our knife skills, the bakery students had made Stollen, which is a sweet roll type of pastry. They passed around some Stollen for all of us to try. It was very good, of course! Anyway, back to the lunch. It was a huge lunch, and I sampled a dessert which was like a variation of Tiramisu. It was very light and airy and delicious of course.
In the afternoon, we took a behind the scenes tour of the store room areas, where they have all the dry goods, produce, and other ingredients used in the cooking throughout the school. It was fun to see all the variety of things that they had, and all the unusual foods too. It is quite an operation here, and everything seemed to be running like clockwork.
We next went on a thorough tour of the school with the Director of the Food Enthusiast Programs. She was a great tour guide, and was an alum of the CIA herself. We toured the Baking and Pastry school, the main building which is called Roth Hall, and we were able to see the rooms where they "fabricate" (butcher) the fish and meat for the entire school. A student gave us a fantastic tour of the meat locker where all the meat is. He was a great speaker, and you could tell that he was "in his element". He has a lot of passion for meat and butchering! He said that beef tenderloin, which is the most expensive cut of meat, is also CRAP! He said there are much better cuts of meat for your money, and don't buy into the myth that it is the best cut of beef.
After the tour, the day started to really hit me, and I was TIRED, and had a pounding headache, but the day was over around 4 pm. Now I would call this a FULL DAY. They do not call it a Boot Camp for nothing, I will tell you that.
We were dismissed, and dinner was on our own. I wasn't hungry for something really big, so I went to a cafe on the campus called the Apple Pie Bakery and Cafe. I got a turkey sandwich (on brioche) with a chipotle mayonnaise, and I couldn't resist getting 2 cookies: chocolate chip and a huge cookie called a "Not an Oreo Oreo". I also perused their bookstore, which was filled with cookbooks, cooking supplies, utensils -- it was AWESOME! I looked at their t-shirts and sweatshirts, but did not not purchase anything... yet. I still have a few days to mull it over if I will get anything. All the shirts were very expensive, not unlike any college bookstore. So I have to think about this purchase decision. I could easily have bought everything in that store though.
I drove back to the hotel, and immediately took a long hot shower to soothe my headache, and wash off the smell of onions that I could sense. I guess smelling like a kitchen is part of the bargain when you do something like this. I ate the sandwich and the cookies, which were outstanding, of course.
The rest of this evening is going to be spent decompressing and re-energizing for tomorrow. Before I end this for now, here is a list of some of the new things I learned today:
- Use a spoon to peel a kiwi fruit. It works better than a knife!
- You can puree garlic by chopping it fine, then put salt on it. Use the end of your knife to mince/crush the garlic into a paste. It worked like a charm! I was amazed I was able to do this!
- If you cut onions "pole to pole", the onions will not disintegrate during cooking since you are cutting them "with the grain".
- When prepping celery, if you will be eating the celery in the finished product, peel the outside of the celery with a vegetable peeler. It just makes it a little bit more refined. If you won't be eating the celery or straining it out, you don't have to bother with the peeling.
- To square off vegetables, just cut off 3 sides to start out, then do your cuts. When you get to the end that isn't squared off, you will have less waste.
- Pick parsley off the stems first before you chop it.
- Remove the wishbone from a raw chicken before you roast it. It makes carving the breast easier.
- To remove skins from a lot of garlic cloves, put the garlic in a bowl, and then put a matching sized bowl on top to make a sphere. Shake the bowls vigorously and this loosens the skins!
- The on-campus restaurants here are staffed by students, and it is one of their classes. Students rotate out of these restaurants every 14 days. So, every 14 days, the restaurants have brand new staffs!
- A new class of students starts up every 3 weeks.
- The CIA has approximately 2,500 students.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
I arrive in Hyde Park, NY
I am writing this blog to keep a record of my Culinary vacation at the Culinary Insitute of America (the CIA). I am attending a culinary Boot Camp that is held at the CIA through their Continuing Education Department. You might be wondering how I even heard of such a thing. Well, about 3 years ago, I read a book, "The Making of a Chef", by Michael Ruhlman. In this book, the author attended the CIA, and wrote a book about his experience. I loved this book, and it was great to live vicariously through the experience of the author. I have always enjoyed cooking from the time I was very young, and it is a hobby that has also turned into a passion as of late.
For no reason one day after I finished reading the book, I went to the CIA's web site. There is a section on the site "for food enthusiasts". This is where I learned of the Boot Camps. It took me a few years to finally follow-through on enrolling in the Boot Camp, and the week is finally here! I start the Basic Skills course bright and early tomorrow on Monday -- at 6 am!
Today I travelled from my home of Pittsburgh, PA to Hyde Park, NY, which is the location of the CIA. My flight was scheduled to leave Pittsburgh at 8:30 am. I woke up around 5:30 am in order to make sure I got to the airport with enough time to allow for getting my bag checked, and going through security. When I got to the airport I checked the flight schedule, and of course, my flight was listed as 'Delayed'! Of course! The weather was great for flying, clear, but apparently the airplane had scheduled maintenance and it was taking longer than expected.
I checked my bag with minimum waiting in line, and I got through security fine. Luckily I did not get chosen to go through the full-body scanner this time (thank goodness), and I was able to go through the regular metal detector.
The flight was delayed 2 hours, and I didn't really feel like I was "on vacation" until the flight was in the air. I flew to Newark, NJ, got my bag from baggage claim, and then I had to take the Airtrain to the Rental Car area. I selected my vehicle (since I have membership in the National Emerald Aisle Club) and plugged the address of the hotel into my GPS, and started the drive up to the CIA.
I could see the entire island of Manhattan as I left the Newark Airport. Luckily I was able to follow the directions on the GPS -- there were a few close calls where I think I could've easily turned by accident and gone through the Lincoln Tunnel, or over the George Washington Bridge. Seeing NYC was tempting, and it made me want to try to take a trip there one of these years.
The drive up took about an hour and a half, and I found my hotel, the Courtyard Marriott in Poughkeepsie, NY. Due to my work as a consultant, I am a Platinum Elite Marriott member, or something like that, because I stay at Courtyards all the time when I travel for work. So when I got into my room, it was comfortable and familiar to me, like my "second home", which is kind of sad but oh well, it's true!
After unpacking my clothes, I drove about 15 minutes north to the CIA campus. It is a beautiful campus, with large old buildings in the collegiate style, with the Hudson River in the background. Since it is the end of the Thanksgiving holiday break, all the buildings were closed, and there weren't a lot of other people on the campus. It was kind of fun to have the place virtually to myself, and I did a quick walk around the campus and took some pictures of the buildings.
There were some banners that were hung around the campus for the holidays, and I took pictures of them because they were food-themed and really clever. The sayings were: "Happy Hollandaise", "Soy to the World", "Merry Crispness", and "Seasoned Greetings". Funny.
I scouted out where I am supposed to park tomorrow, and where to go for the orientation and class. With that done, I got back in my car, and slowly drove through the rest of the campus, passing the library, the many different dorms and residence halls. There were some students unpacking their cars, so I assumed they were coming back for the rest of the semester after the Thanksgiving break. It brought back memories for me of when I was in college and I would travel back after the break. I admit I was jealous of these students since they get to study cooking and food service. It's like Hogwarts for food people (instead of magic folk).
I left the campus, and drove to a supermarket (Price Chopper) in Poughkeepsie. I just got some cereal, bananas, and milk. I hadn't eaten anything since 7 am, and it was already 3:30 pm, so I was getting a hunger headache. But I just wanted something simple and bland -- I think there is going to be enough opportunities to eat some great food this week, so I thought going simple is the best thing for now.
I am planning on going to sleep rather early tonight. Besides the fact that I need to wake up super early tomorrow, I got up super early today, and I know I am going to be sleepy earlier than usual.
Well, wish me luck tomorrow! I am hoping it will be a fun experience, and I hope I learn something. Also, I hope the other Boot Campers are nice and we get along. I am not expecting to make any new or life-long friends, but it will be really interesting to learn everyone's stories and see what brought them here for this Boot Camp experience.
For no reason one day after I finished reading the book, I went to the CIA's web site. There is a section on the site "for food enthusiasts". This is where I learned of the Boot Camps. It took me a few years to finally follow-through on enrolling in the Boot Camp, and the week is finally here! I start the Basic Skills course bright and early tomorrow on Monday -- at 6 am!
Today I travelled from my home of Pittsburgh, PA to Hyde Park, NY, which is the location of the CIA. My flight was scheduled to leave Pittsburgh at 8:30 am. I woke up around 5:30 am in order to make sure I got to the airport with enough time to allow for getting my bag checked, and going through security. When I got to the airport I checked the flight schedule, and of course, my flight was listed as 'Delayed'! Of course! The weather was great for flying, clear, but apparently the airplane had scheduled maintenance and it was taking longer than expected.
I checked my bag with minimum waiting in line, and I got through security fine. Luckily I did not get chosen to go through the full-body scanner this time (thank goodness), and I was able to go through the regular metal detector.
The flight was delayed 2 hours, and I didn't really feel like I was "on vacation" until the flight was in the air. I flew to Newark, NJ, got my bag from baggage claim, and then I had to take the Airtrain to the Rental Car area. I selected my vehicle (since I have membership in the National Emerald Aisle Club) and plugged the address of the hotel into my GPS, and started the drive up to the CIA.
I could see the entire island of Manhattan as I left the Newark Airport. Luckily I was able to follow the directions on the GPS -- there were a few close calls where I think I could've easily turned by accident and gone through the Lincoln Tunnel, or over the George Washington Bridge. Seeing NYC was tempting, and it made me want to try to take a trip there one of these years.
The drive up took about an hour and a half, and I found my hotel, the Courtyard Marriott in Poughkeepsie, NY. Due to my work as a consultant, I am a Platinum Elite Marriott member, or something like that, because I stay at Courtyards all the time when I travel for work. So when I got into my room, it was comfortable and familiar to me, like my "second home", which is kind of sad but oh well, it's true!
After unpacking my clothes, I drove about 15 minutes north to the CIA campus. It is a beautiful campus, with large old buildings in the collegiate style, with the Hudson River in the background. Since it is the end of the Thanksgiving holiday break, all the buildings were closed, and there weren't a lot of other people on the campus. It was kind of fun to have the place virtually to myself, and I did a quick walk around the campus and took some pictures of the buildings.
There were some banners that were hung around the campus for the holidays, and I took pictures of them because they were food-themed and really clever. The sayings were: "Happy Hollandaise", "Soy to the World", "Merry Crispness", and "Seasoned Greetings". Funny.
I scouted out where I am supposed to park tomorrow, and where to go for the orientation and class. With that done, I got back in my car, and slowly drove through the rest of the campus, passing the library, the many different dorms and residence halls. There were some students unpacking their cars, so I assumed they were coming back for the rest of the semester after the Thanksgiving break. It brought back memories for me of when I was in college and I would travel back after the break. I admit I was jealous of these students since they get to study cooking and food service. It's like Hogwarts for food people (instead of magic folk).
I left the campus, and drove to a supermarket (Price Chopper) in Poughkeepsie. I just got some cereal, bananas, and milk. I hadn't eaten anything since 7 am, and it was already 3:30 pm, so I was getting a hunger headache. But I just wanted something simple and bland -- I think there is going to be enough opportunities to eat some great food this week, so I thought going simple is the best thing for now.
I am planning on going to sleep rather early tonight. Besides the fact that I need to wake up super early tomorrow, I got up super early today, and I know I am going to be sleepy earlier than usual.
Well, wish me luck tomorrow! I am hoping it will be a fun experience, and I hope I learn something. Also, I hope the other Boot Campers are nice and we get along. I am not expecting to make any new or life-long friends, but it will be really interesting to learn everyone's stories and see what brought them here for this Boot Camp experience.
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